1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to microwave antennas, and particularly to a ferrite-loaded circular waveguide antenna for 3D scanning having a magnetizing coil adapted for connection to a current source in order to alter the biasing of the ferrite member to realize three-dimensional (3D) beam scanning.
2. Description of the Related Art
High power microwave applications, such as radars and transmitter antennas, often require three-dimensional beam steering capabilities. Waveguide antennas are popular in high power devices, but introducing reconfigurable coverage using phased array technique often becomes impractical due to the large size of the array. In the literature, multimode waveguide antennas are investigated to introduce beam steering and reduction of side lobe levels. The gain and directivity improvement of the circular waveguide antenna is demonstrated by loading dielectric or electromagnetic band gap (EBG) material. Beam scanning using magnetized ferrite-loaded waveguide slot array is studied in another reference work. Although ferrites are widely used in high power control devices, like phase shifters and circulators, it is yet to be used to realize multi-directional beam scan of a single waveguide antenna.
Thus, a ferrite-loaded circular waveguide antenna for 3D scanning solving the aforementioned problems is desired.